NXNE Film Festival Breakdown: Screens Can Rock Too

Canada's North By Northeast festival (NXNE) is underway in Toronto and continues through Sunday. The younger sibling to the South By Southwest (SXSW) version of the event held in Austin, Texas, NXNE has been around for 16 years, celebrating emerging talent and the not-so-mainstream acts coming out of Canada and beyond.

While Toronto's stages are crowded with guitars, tattoos and plastic cups full of who-knows-what over the next four days, its movie theatres are set to rock almost as hard. Over 40 films are screening at six venues over 96 hours, covering topics and subjects as varied as the musical landscape.

"I think we are hitting it out of the park this year," says festival film programmer Ambrose Roche. "I think it's doubled in size, close to 50 films. The initial mandate was to tie in interesting films about music. This year I made more of an effort to open it up to be more of an independent film festival. I am hoping this is a showcase for independent-minded films and filmmakers – people on the edge who are flogging their stuff the way musicians have to flog their stuff."